


You Shine On, Boys

by archea2



Category: Supernatural, The Shining (1980)
Genre: First Time, Humor, M/M, Romance, Season/Series 05, Sibling Incest, not a horror fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 10:57:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15193280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: The Holiday Hulk Motel is in fact called the Overlook, which, seriously?"Makes it too easy for the guests to complain," Dean tells Sam in his n-th attempt to deride him. "Like, oh, Mr. Grady, I think you’veoverlookedmy fresh towels again. No wonder the poor schmuck blew a gasket."(A Supernatural/Shining fusion, sort of, but not a horror fic.)





	You Shine On, Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a certain nonnie's prompt, over on a certain anon meme, that we should picture our faves as the new caretakers of the Overlook Hotel.
> 
> My mind ran a beeline to Sam and Dean. But then I thought back to Season 10 and Dean chasing poor Sam through the bunker's hallways with a sledgehammer. Canon, I thought, had the horror fusion already covered.
> 
> So I wrote this instead.

The view, let it be said, is breathtaking. Or would be, if it wasn’t night and as cold as Satan’s left nipple, which is about the least arousing simile Dean’s zonked-out psyche can whip up. Not that Dean has any idea how the devil’s titty-tips feel. That’s for Sam to find out if he says the big _I do_ , which Dean still claims ain’t happening, not a chance, never ever, if if has any say in Sam’s ever-after.

What he says now is "Man. This is, like, the Holiday Hulk Motel. How big is this place?"

Sam doesn’t answer. Sam doesn’t answer much, these days. It could be that he’s prepping himself for his next job interview with Lucifer, or the archangels, or whoever has his eye on him as the Finger Puppet of Doom. In which case, Sam would be fully in his right to plead the Fifth and zip it.

But he’s not answering Dean a lot either, ever since they got back from touring Heaven, and it’s getting under Dean's skin. And, yeah, it’s all his fault –when is it not, when it comes to Sam’s heartaches, Sam’s capital of pangs and losses, increased with every passing year? – but it’s not like Dean can fix it overnight, okay? And it scares him. Leaves him in the lurch, angry and sad and fearful all at once, because they’d just got back to where they could quick-fire at each other, nice and easy, could laugh and banter and be brothers again, and now it’s all gone to the waste. 

With the amulet.

If Sam hadn’t made a point in Heaven that all his happy hours are without him...

"We’d better get inside," Sam finally says. "Weather’s been... none too reliable lately." 

Another courtesy of the Doomsday Gang. "Yeah," Dean says tiredly, and looks about for a nice dry garage. Baby at least deserves a break, after that long-ass uphill ride.

 

* * *

 

The Holiday Hulk Motel is in fact called the Overlook, which, seriously?

"Makes it too easy for the guests to complain," Dean tells Sam in his n-th attempt to deride him. "Like, oh, Mr. Grady, I think you’ve _overlooked_ my fresh towels again. No wonder the poor schmuck blew a gasket."

Sadly, attempt n is a bust. "Huh," comes Sam's ripost. Grimly. "So let’s assume Grady is haunting this place – which has a grand total of three hundred rooms, to say nothing of the staff venues… Dean, we could spend weeks here investigating!"

"Hey." Dean’s hands are spread out, channelling his inner Kofi Annan. " _You_ picked the case."

"Yeah, after _you_ gave me a choice of Wuthering Heights here, house arrest at Bobby’s, or your Michael stupid. Slim pickings, dude."

"Yeah, well, now you get a choice of three hundred rooms. I’m taking on the kitchen."

"Figures," Sam says, sourly, but when Dean hits him two hours later with a ‘THIRTY TEN-POUND BAGS OF HAMBURGER, MAN’ text, he earns himself a smiley. Sam’s customary upside-down smile, emoji style.

Still. It’s a start.

 

* * *

 

They reconvene for lunch, which is beef ricotta casserole with canned greens on the side. The far side, in Dean’s case.

"Best oven ever," Dean says repeatedly. "You could fit in all of old McDonald’s farm and still have room to bake a pie. And the ice cream!"

"Huh. Well, don’t get too comfy. We haven’t vetted the place yet." 

"Oh, there’s something here all right." Dean wipes his sleeve across his lips, comfily, blind to Sam’s own pursed mouth. "Like, the balloons."

"The _what?"_

"Bal-loons," Dean articulates over another hot and bubbly spoonful. "All over the main floor. Creepy, right? Here." He gropes under the table, hoists up a pink monstrosity. "Made you a dog sculpture."

His gift is received cautiously. "Thanks," Sam says. "So, get this – the EMF went beserk near the elevator."

Dean ponders. The restless dead _have_ been known to bond with elevators, probably due to a kinship of up-and-down, regularly-stuck-in-between spirits. Nothing new under the sun. Well, the not-sun.

"Man, it never snows in Oregon but it pours, eh?"

The clatter jolts his head away from the view. Sam is doubled down on himself, and Dean’s chair takes a backflop to the ground. "Hey," he says, and when Sam answers with a moan, "Sam. Sammy? Sam, _inhale_ , man. Whatever this is, it ain’t got you, because I do." (He does. He has both knees to the floor, Sam’s head clutched to his chest, and his own is angled so he can direct his words to Sam’s eyes, their burnt hazel now darker, running into the pupils’ black.) Sam moans again, a slow, swollen release of air. It's weird, it's sensual weird, and Dean is made sharply, suddenly aware of the vicinity of their mouths - all the more as Sam is _smacking his lips_.

The moan comes to a halt.

"Sorry," comes next. And then, Sam’s voice the gist of contrition, "Too… much… blood". 

"Oh," Dean says feebly. "That's, uh, what you saw?"

"...yeah. I mean, you said _pour_ , and there it was – the blood – right out of the elevator’s doors. _Buckets_ of it," Sam adds dreamily. Then does his best to recant. ‘Oh, Dean, no. Hell, no. You know I’d never, I swear, I no longer –."

Great. Just great. Dean has honed his casserole skills for the best of an hour, only for some Jack-in-the-box to tempt Sam with an unlimited evil liquid lunch.

"I’m taking a hatchet to that son of a bitch!"

"Thought we’d buried it," Sam mutters, still shifty-eyed, but he’s got his size 14 paw on Dean’s knee and isn’t that a far cry from the last time he manhandled Dean. That, and Sam’s words, which are making Dean glad. 

Whatever bad blood is on the prowl, it’s no longer between them.

"We did," he promises, having and holding Sam’s human gaze.

 

* * *

 

The elevator gets its very own anti-possession tattoos, one per door, and Sam and Dean get some alone time in the hotel.

Which, jackpot. They’ve never dawdled on a case before – hunting is rock around the clock for a Winchester – but it’s not like they know what they’re up against. Some concierge or other blew his head off after a few weeks’ solitary confinement here, and now the manager wants the hotel cleared before he hires another man for the job. Dean thinks. It’s weird, how cottony the falling snow can make your brain feel. But, eh. Here they are, and the place is actually a boost once you overlook (ha!) the maroon and orange overkill design, or the dominant red in the gents’ bathrooms.

But yeah, this place is awesome. It has big-ass windows letting in the pale sun, it has thirty frozen chickens, an endless supply of ice cream, and shelf upon shelf of books in the main lobby to keep Sammy happy. It’s a clean dive. It's also above and remote from the world, which Dean has no issues with these days. The place is a stoked-up, vintage, deluxe bunker, and as such it has startled Dean into unexpected thoughts of home. Time was, Dean would dangle that white suburban picket fence under Sam’s nose as a bait, or a test, but Sam has made it clear he’s gone so far beyond _suburban_  he might as well buy a straw hat and practice saying howdy. If – and that’s a big if, given the present zeitgeist – they are to have a home, then Dean wouldn’t mind a place like this. Huge, a labyrinth of rooms to be explored on rainy days: a glorified hide-and-seek venue, where he and Sam would always find each other at the end of the day.

For now, Dean is happy to ride the endless carpeted hallways sprawled on a waiter’s trolley, until Sam gripes about the ruckus. And then the snow abates, and Dean says it’s time to break the cabin fever.

Sam says it’s been only four days and Dean would get cabin fever on a subway ride, but he too flannels up in the end. Dean doesn’t wait for him; runs out, across the front yard and into the amazing maze thingy that’s apparently made of evergreen, because it’s all green and shiny even now in the heart of winter. He enters first, but there’s no fun in the chase if Sam finds him straightaway, so he takes care to retrace his steps in the snow and lie down in ambush. He waits as Sam passes him, crying "Dean! Dean!" and, after a while, " _Deanny!"_ , a relic of their teenaged years, when Sam was being a little bitch about a certain nickname. 

They find each other in the maze's heart, surrounded by white snow and green leaves, and it’s awesome. It’s just – awesome. Sam’s nose is red and running, and Dean has all the grace of a walking snow cone, but they’re laughing. It’s that rare brand of laughter that feels like bourbon and birthdays, like each of them is holding to the other’s breath, giddy and open-mouthed, which may explain why Dean’s face sort of takes a jolting step forward and meets Sam’s in the middle.

"You’re frozen," Sam says after a while, blowing warm air against Dean’s lips. 

"Better give me a nice long _look-over_ , then."

Sam groans his next laugh. Then he gives Dean an Inuit kiss, tosses the sum of him across his shoulders, and proceeds out of the maze the way Dad taught them, years ago, by having his sons figure their way back from school through every town sewer.

 

* * *

 

That night, Dean breaks out the ice cream - out of sheer perversity.

 

* * *

 

 

Their kissing probation gets extended through the night and during the next snowfall, which they spend bouncing a ball against the towering lobby walls (Dean) and going through the 1920es scrapbooks (Sam). Dean invites every chaste press of lips, but stays short of hurrying Sam, whose libido clearly needs a little rebooting in its post-Ruby era. When the hotel begins to chant for more, a medley of _loud_ lower tones escorting them up the bedroom stairs, Dean pulls back, one hand still stroking down the side of Sam’s face, and yells "Guests’ privacy rights, motherfuckers!". 

The voices drop down, but that’s when the ghosts show up.

"Twins," Dean tells Sam soon after. He sounds outraged. "And they couldn’t have been a day over nine. Who do these freaks think I am, David Hamilton?"

"Yeah, well, I got the other end of the stick. Bath lady. _Vastly_ overaged."

"Ah, Sammy. Once a cougar hound…" Dean pauses mid-chuckle, missing the ball as it catapults back from the main chandelier. "Wait, like a toilet attendant?"

So Sam tells him the whole story, up to " _She_ kissed me" in slightly aggrieved tones, like Dean has set a precedent and now the whole hotel wants to hit that. He’s babbling about white ladies and water sprites, and Rimbaud’s _Vénus Anadyomène_ , when Dean cuts in with "Show me". 

It’s a good thing every facility here is outsized, because Sam looks unspeakably hot, stepping out of their en-suite bath all legs and wet, impeccably plastered hair. Dean watches him cross over to him with a pang of joy. There’s his boy, there’s his Sam, finally in the clear - all of last year’s lies, guilt and bloodlust washed away, like. When Sam puts his arms around his neck and his mouth to Dean’s, humid and offering, Dean feels like he's naked, too, and it’s a newborn love.

(Dean does get naked that night, because he’s a literal guy, but that’s another tale.)

"I don’t get it," he says later, limp and warm and blissful in Sam’s arms. "None of these ghosts have tried to harm us yet. They’re noisy, yeah, and they’re kind of kinky…"

"Tell me about it. They practically gave me a stadium wave when I gave you –" 

"Yeah, that’s it. They’re quite congenial, as ghosts go. So are they even that?" 

Sam ponders a bit. "You think Gabriel’s up to new tricks? Could be. I mean, do you even remember what that guy looked like? The manager, who talked us into the case?" 

Dean gives it a cottony go. "Curly," he says. "Starsky wannabe. Wait, didn’t he interview us here?"

"Yeah, I guess, but that doesn’t make sense. All I recall is our drive uphill and you griping about the lack of decent pit stops. Trust me, I’d know it if we’d had to make it twice."

Dean says "Mmm" agreeably, burrowing into Sam’s neck. 

"We need to look closer at these pictures," Sam is saying, but to Dean it only comes as a vibrant lull from one warm body to the next, ushering him into the best night’s sleep he’s had in years.

 

* * *

 

The snow keeps falling.

Dean switches on all the lamps in the living room, so Sam can review the pictures at his heart’s content, before he takes a little constitutional down the hallways. The ghosts are playing soft jazz, which Dean would normally take exception to, except it kind of slots into the general Roaring Twenties theme. Perhaps the ghosts are happy that Sam is taking an interest in them. On that note, Dean slides the Gold Room’s portal doors open and joins the fun.

The salon is packed, but there’s a vacant seat at the bar, near a guy-and-doll twosome, so Dean slips into it. "Scotch," he asks the bartender, Lloyd – a still-sober guess, because the guy looks like a Lloyd. "Go wild on the peanuts." 

Lloyd blinks, but tops his glass. Then again. And again. Lloyd is no conversationalist, but he keeps the Scotch coming, though he seems intent for Dean to take a stroll every time some old coot promenading a tray passes by. Dean, however, is content to keep it mellow here, where the ectoplasm for once _tastes_ like booze. He’s halfway through his fourth and enjoying the period show, when the old coot trips right over his feet and splashes Dean generously with some yellow chick cocktail.

Dean says "No biggie", waving a firm though courteous hand when the coot tries to lure him into the gents. It’s not like he lacks practice after a decade of truck stops. "I’m spoken for," he adds when the coot’s napkin comes in play near his crotch. "Look, man, it’s fine. I’ll just dump it in when Sam’s on laundry duty, okay?"

"Sam," the man says, a sudden gleam in his eye. Must be into threesomes. "Your brrrother Sam?" 

Dean says yes, because it’s not like incest is top-of-the-charts sin around here, and braces himself for the offer. Instead, Baldy leans forward with a conspiratorial leer and his ever-rolled French R’s, and asks if Sam has been a naughty boy.

Well, fuck.

"Look, it’s not the kid’s fault he started the –"

"Perhaps," Baldy interrupts him, all but slobbering at the jaws, "perhaps what he needs is a good talking-to. Or even more. Perhaps you should corrrrrrect him, sir. When my wife –"

Dean makes it out of the Gold Room in ten seconds, tops, never stopping until he’s slammed the doors shut. His next beeline is for Sam, who by now has organized all the pictures according to year, gender and vice levels, and is busy cross-referencing them according to some obscure Sam Chart. 

"Found the one into spanking," Dean says, breathless, flopping down next to him.

"Oh," Sam says. He picks up his chart and and makes a note.

"Man, _ghosts_ ," Dean explodes, but he lets Sam pat his thigh consolingly. It’s nice, Sam’s patting, and it helps Dean unwind as he watches the strong large hands push the pictures around. They have roast chicken for dinner and Sam praises his cooking, and somehow Sam’s praise, and Sam’s hands, and the lingering burn of bourbon... they switch on a light that was in Dean all along, only put under the bushel.

He asks hoarsely, "Sammy, do you think I’m a naughty boy?".

 

* * *

 

"…Definitely trying you on a wooden spoon," Sam teases him later. "There _has_ to be in that jungle of a kitchen, right? My hand hurts."

Dean is ecstatic, and they both visit the Gold Room that night, and get gloriously drunk together.

 

* * *

 

Sam has crossed out witches, sirens, succubi, tricksters, and Dean’s helpful suggestion of a supernatural whorehouse, when they spot the typewriter.

"So, possessed object?" Dean asks, after Sam has assured him multiple times that, no, it wasn’t here yesterday, Or any day before. He glances at the half-filled page and does a double take.

"What the –" 

 _All drafts and no work make Chuck a dull hack. All drafts and no work make Chuck a dull hack. All drafts and no work make Chuck a dull hack_.

And so on, and so forth. You'd think that typewriter has one job and is determined to see it through. There’s a box on the table, crammed with stacks of other pages, all of them bearing this very sentence. Some have it down in Spanish, others in French. Latin capitals. Cyrillics, abjad script, Pinyin characters, even little black squiggles which Sam tells him are ancient Aramaic.

"Chuck," he adds, musing. "Guess what, the name rings a bell."

‘Yeah, same. Can’t place it, though. So who’s Chucky, and what’s the deal with his curse?’

Sam takes some time to answer, tapping his fingertip to his buxom lower lip. "Well, from all appearances, he’s a writer," comes at last. "With a _lot_ of incomplete drafts. And I think…. I think he’s the reason for this whole gig."

"What, like a _Misery_ plot? We have to write up the damn thing for him, or else?"

"Not exactly."

"Good. Because I never remember that penguin’s right profile."

"The way I see it, this writer, Chuck, he’s some kind of recluse. Like Salinger. He’s also a very, very powerful being, who came here to, well, write something. And he tried. But his first drafts never came to much. Though his magic was strong enough to make his characters come alive, but only as ghosts, either because they’re fiction, or, uh. He’s not that great a writer."

"So what, we’re dealing with a hack’s prose zombies?"

"Sort of? I think he tried his hand at a thriller first, and when that didn’t work he went for erotica. A period novel. Children’s lit, perhaps. Only he never finished any of them, so what we’re seeing here is all his bits and blobs, mixed together." 

"Those li'l girls." Dean is counting on his fingers. "And the Grady case. The bath lady. The Jazz Age crowd. And the, ah, kinksters. They were all works in progress, and when he _chucked_ them and bailed out to start on some new project, he forgot to switch off his mojo." 

"Yeah, the creative writing did go on, only it was stuck in a loop."

"And so, this place…"

‘My take is, he created it too. Some kind of super-sized private nook."

It’s Dean’s turn to pause. "And what about us?"

"You’re real," Sam counters at once. "If there’s one thing I know, one block that writer doesn’t own, it’s this. You. You’re real, and you and I are going to figure a way out of this."

"But the snow – "

"The snow’s not real. The hotel’s not real. Don’t let it upset you, Dean. I’m not quite sure how or why we got caught in this, but we’ve spent this entire year telling angels and demons they couldn’t script our lives and I’m not letting _a portable Remington_ get away with it." 

"Hey." He draws Sam to him, waits until Sammy has taken the full measure of his will and grown accordingly pliant in his arms. "I’m not upset. You know, in a way, it… it’s been sort of fun. Like a break.’

Sam smiles against his neck. "Great food, man."

"Great company. Could have done without our next-door neighbours, though. Man, that Chuck sucks at porn writing. I mean, who am I to judge when it’s consensual, but in my opinion you don’t put a dog mask with _teeth_ anywhere near –"

"I loved the company," Sam cuts in. "The human one, that is. Wouldn’t trade it for anything. And I liked the jazz."

‘You would. Okay, then. It’s late, so I vote we bunk tonight and start plotting our way out tomorrow."

Sam nods, his gaze already soft-edged with sleepiness, so Dean takes his hand and leads him up the flight of stairs. The voices are a mere hum, the words still foreign, but not unfriendly. Even the dark is toned down. It comes with a touch of moon, enough to spark Dean’s lines of salt with a crystalline glow and light his way to the bed and Sam’s open arms.

Later, there is another light.

It shines up the stairs and down the hallways, the shining so pure and white that it makes the entire room visible upon the visitor’s entrance. The first thing he sees are the sleepers, wrapped in each other’s rest, as he takes the shining to them. For a long moment, he stays there, his right hand – the one holding the incandescent object – poised above Dean’s chest. But Dean shifts closer to Sam, as if to shield him with his body, and the visitor shakes his head; mutters "No flashforward" to himself, and putters around the room until he’s found Sam’s jacket lying on a chair. Next, his hand disappears up to the wrist into one of the pockets, and when it comes out, the shining has gone. 

The visitor goes, too, but only as far as downstairs. The lamps leap to life in the living room as he approaches the table. The typewriter is still on it, and the visitor gives it an apologetic nod of head. 

Then, a sigh. A meditative scratch of beard. The visitor goes to the window and stares for a while at the gigantic maze outside, before he turns his face up to the high ceiling, and the bedroom above, and lifts his hand again as if in a blessing.

The very last sound heard in the Overlook is a snap of fingers.

 

* * *

 

It’s still the Indian summer in the Colorado Rockies, the crowns of the trees a warm trail of oranges, maroons and greens past the Impala’s windows. The air has a note of cold to it, but it is no sharp note: the air is still mostly sun. The road is downhill and Baby takes it easy, purring approval at the smooth tarmac.

"One down," Dean crows, toasting the case. It’s already slipping past the far edge of memory: just another ghost gig, leaving an odd sentiment of... happiness? Hope? Dean is uncertain, but he feels more refreshed than he has been for a very long time. 

"Ha, right. But how many to go, now Lucifer is – "

"Look," Dean says. It’s nothing more than a gamut, Dean’s way of lassoing his brother’s notice to whatever point he is about to make. But Sam half-leans sideways, and Dean half-turns to him, and the point suddenly ceases to matter. "Look," Dean says again, pointing to the view with his chin. It’s beautiful, a thing of mountains, strength and tall, longhaired trees, and every which way Dean turns, it just happens to be include Sam in his eye corner. 

"We’re gonna make sure this all lives on," is all he says, just as Sam touches his forehead to Dean’s temple. The touch ignites something warm and without a name, that resonates beyond words. Whatever they have, he and Sam, that was made or mended during the case, it goes without saying. It means that they could drive on for hours and have an entire conversation, Sam and Dean, without opening their mouths.

Sam pulls back a little, but leaves one of his hands in custody of Dean’s knee. The other, Dean’s eye corner informs him, is shoved deep into the pocket of Sam’s jacket. His boy probably needs new gloves. And a plaid shirt. The Apocalypse is no excuse to let Sam catch a cold, even if October is still on its last legs. 

"Funny," Sam is saying. "I’m trying to recall that ghost’s name, Gradus? Greedy? For our case records. But my brain is all muzzy."

"Yeah," Dean echoes, absently, because _his_ brain is still trying to make room for that new joy and the warm patch of Sam’s hand on his thigh. "Me too. All I remember is something about a caretaker. Just, I can’t figure if he was Greedy, or Gradus, or a completely different guy. Man, what’s with the oxygen level up here?" 

Sam laughs outright, warm and beautiful, and Dean lets Baby rev up in sympathy as she finally hits the straight road.

"Yeah, I’m not sure either. I couldn’t say, Dean." Sam’s voice sounds close, perhaps because Sam’s half-leaning has become Sam laying his head on Dean’s half-turned shoulder. "But this I know, and give thanks for. Here in our lives – you have always been the caretaker."


End file.
